|
I prefer "I could give two shits."
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2013 05:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 08:34 |
|
|
crabrock posted:I actually love that process in theory, but it's hard to get use to. It's very elitist to say language has to be a certain way and stay that way and only certain people know how that is. But I'm against the language changing in ways that don't make sense, like idiots saying "i could care less." Language change is great when it adds to our expressive power - when we have more terms to say exactly what we mean, and know we're going to be understood. Language change is bad when inaccuracies reduce our expressive power, or invert (pervert) it. UK goons, have a read of Oliver Kamm's "The Pedant" column in the Times - https://twitter.com/OliverKamm Oh, and David Mitchell on "I could care less" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2013 12:42
|
|
|
Symptomless Coma posted:Language change is great when it adds to our expressive power - when we have more terms to say exactly what we mean, and know we're going to be understood. Language change is bad when inaccuracies reduce our expressive power, or invert (pervert) it. Yes, this sums up my position pretty well. I'm in favour of everything which makes unambiguous communication easier.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2013 13:07
|
|
|
It's pretty apparent that the English language has been simplified, certainly in fiction. Commas these days, commas loving everywhere.
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2013 18:49
|
|
|
How do you decide when your story is finished? When do you decide to stop tweaking?
|
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2013 19:18
|
|
|
When you can't get rid of anything more. It's kind of a loose metric, I guess, but when you can chop out: 1) Anything that isn't the story 2) Anything that repeats itself in other words 3) Any scenes that don't advance character and plot 3) Any overly descriptive sections (unless they serve story, theme, or tone) 4) Two adjectives in succession (eg, in "He was a tall, weasely man", toss the weaker descriptor) 5) Any unnecessary adverbs 6) Any unnecessary words at all then you usually have a story that follows King's formula in On Writing: 2nd draft = 1st draft -10%. What you end up with is a leaner work that has no useless parts. When you can absolutely not remove anything else, that's a good place to stop tweaking. I'd also argue that there's two major kinds of tweaking: the line, and the chapter. Chapter tweaking is more about reworking scene, and most of that involves making sure that those scenes work off each other to establish theme, dramatic irony, foreshadowing, tone, subtext, and a whole slew of other things you probably picked up the names for in English class (and should probably never think about in a first draft, where you want to focus on character and story). Reworking scene is a lot easier once you've reworked lines--you've scalpeled away everything you don't need to work with--but it can still be a crying bitch, because you're looking at the larger story. I can only speak for myself on this one, but I judge a good chapter or a good scene by asking myself if it ties into the one that came before and the one that came after. That connection can be whatever you need it to be--plot, sure, but also theme--but if that connection isn't there, it's a dislocated scene, and needs to be reworked. If it is there, you're good to go. edit One more thing on line tweaking: it's a forest you can very easily get lost in. Remember that you're a fiction writer and not a poet, so unless you're aiming for art over entertainment,* don't confuse clarity and grace for lyricism. If your sentences are clean and declarative and have no unintended ambiguity, don't worry about trying to turn them into music. Not every brick has to be studded with diamonds. *and this certainly isn't a bad thing; look at Cormac McCarthy's command of the language Asbury fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Jun 2, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jun 2, 2013 21:20
|
|
|
magnificent7 posted:How do you decide when your story is finished? When do you decide to stop tweaking? For Thunderdome, the two times I have won (and note that when I didn't place very well, I didn't have time to do the following) I did this: On Tuesday night, as soon as the prompt was posted, I read it and started brainstorming. The next day I spent several hours thinking up ideas and letting them fight each other in my head for which was best to use. I tried to consider how well each idea met the prompt, how much conflict and character development would be possible within each idea, and how good of a hook I could put onto each idea (pretty important for flash fiction). I tend to think really hard about my opening line and how "late" I can start the narrative. For weeks where I have not done very well according to the judges, I had a gut feeling during this stage that I was selecting an idea that failed to do well for any or most of the above criteria. I wrote the first draft on the day after the prompt was posted. After I finished the first draft I closed the word processor and did something else. Several hours later I opened the draft back up and did heavy editing, noticing many mistakes and unclear writing. I then re-opened the draft every four or five hours until the submission deadline, making constant edits. I never really felt "done;" I just felt I had made the maximal use of the time before the submission deadline. For one of the weeks I had a draft which I had edited for two or three days before realizing that my criteria of, "how much conflict and character development would be possible" was lacking, so I trashed the whole thing and wrote a new story with the same basic idea but in a different setting and with a stronger conflict. The edits almost always are reducing the word count whenever possible. Taking hours between edits allows you to read the story with fresh eyes and see things that just stick out as bad. When people tell you to "read read read," they are trying to help you hone this skill of seeing things stick out. Even if you have perfected this skill, you still need to take your eyes off your writing to get a fresh perspective. Waiting until the last few days or trying to shove all my editing into a four-hour block does not work for me. I'm sure some people are good at writing in one go and not editing, or doing a lot of editing at the end, but I doubt that they wouldn't benefit from doing more editing and spacing that editing out over a longer period of time. After I got critiques for these pieces, I spent many more weeks trying to edit them further for publication. I don't really think you can be completely finished with anything in the space of a Thunderdome week. EDIT: I just saw your submission for this week. Huge improvement from previous weeks... grats dude. angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Jun 3, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2013 10:36
|
|
|
Thanks for the great answers. Very helpful.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2013 13:31
|
|
|
One good thing is that after mag7 sent us the first rough version, he went back and rewrote large sections of it and fixed the mistakes and made it make sense. He didn't just do a line-by-line edit of things we corrected. Also he didn't brag about his idea or story at all!
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2013 14:52
|
|
|
crabrock posted:Also he didn't brag about his idea or story at all!
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2013 19:59
|
|
|
magnificent7 posted:Okay now you're just kicking a dead horse. No, pointing out an improvement.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2013 20:07
|
|
|
Erogenous Beef posted:I'm pretty sure it's not meant to be a character thing, given how many adverbs and purple phrases I had to slog through to find it. What made me cringe isn't the lovely grammar. My jaw almost unhinged itself from yawning at the cliche.
|
|
#
?
Jun 3, 2013 23:56
|
|
|
magnificent7 posted:How do you decide when your story is finished? When do you decide to stop tweaking? For ThunderDome, that'd be the deadline. I'm nowhere near as organised as Systran on his best days. I tend to have a bit of a think about it before I go to sleep for a couple of nights and see if anything clicks, general mental wrangling with the prompt. Then I write on the weekend, a day ahead if I'm being virtuous, with most written the first day and the end and a polish the second. Or the first day's thrown away and restarted if it's just drunken drivel. You should see my aborted first draft file sometime if you think you've written some poo poo. But I cannot, cannot resist horrible, horrible last minute tweaks that stuff up everything and introduce typos, repeated words and stray periods. Even in the SA editing window. This is a path of regret and shame that would be entirely avoidable if I started earlier. But oh, the womb-like joys of procrastination! On the other hand - now I've got a few TD flash fictions in my folder, I actually revisit older ones as a warm-up exercise before I start writing. A lot of them only needed some distance and some following of the advice I got from crits to really make a difference. I think I've learned a lot from those in hind site - and though obviously I don't want to be polishing them forever, it never hurts to revisit and see how your eye has developed. Fumblemouse fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Jun 4, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2013 03:51
|
|
|
magnificent7 posted:How do you decide when your story is finished? When do you decide to stop tweaking? A Science-Fiction writer began working 56 hour weeks. During this, he wrote a novel. It was long and messy and confusing, so he struggled to cut it down to 5,000 words. After lots of arduous work, he finally finished with the story. He showed his wife the story and asked what she thought. She told him she didn't get it. So he asked his mother and she didn't get it either. Fed-up, he submitted it at a publisher he knew and told her to publish it or burn it. She replied that he needed to cut it more. So he simply refused, and told her to throw it out. She published the story anyways and the readerbase loved it. It ended up being one of his more successful stories. In the author's words, "Moral: Don't believe what everybody tells you, even if everybody is your mother." Take that as you will. (You can read that story here) http://www.strangehorizons.com/2009/20090413/lostsea-f.shtml
|
|
#
?
Jun 4, 2013 06:51
|
|
|
^^^ That was a really cool story and one of the few short stories I've felt moved by. I'd never read it before so thanks for linking bro. Chillmatic made a pretty valid critique of my most recent Thunderdome piece, which was that my character used childish terms instead of the more contextually appropriate dick, rear end, bitch, etc. If you didn't read it (and I wouldn't blame you), it was a story written from the perspective of a woman who was willingly being tortured and murdered for the purpose of having the most metal sex ever, I guess. True story. Anyway I originally wrote it with a lot more ugly language, but it seemed too gratuitous and I thought it would be interesting if the narrator used more "cutesy" language that was completely unsuited for the context. I ended up reading a lot about her story, and the usenet newsgroups that kinda validated her torture fetish, and in my head her personality ended up being sort of similar to the character Annie from Stephen King's Misery. Only masochistic instead of weirdly maternal and possessive. Annie was a funny sort because, while she was perfectly OK with kidnapping and hobbling dudes, she would call the protagonist a "dirty-birdy" and wouldn't let him swear. I didn't want to carry on in the TD thread, but I was interested in any feedback as to how I might have done that juxtaposition better, or whether I should have just gone for the more visceral language.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2013 00:24
|
|
|
Sitting Here posted:^^^ That was a really cool story and one of the few short stories I've felt moved by. I'd never read it before so thanks for linking bro. I think the impulse was right, but that you didn't quite execute (lol, etc) on it properly. Perhaps if you'd made that conflict more central to her character? Shown her losing control over the propriety as her foetid epiphany approached, say?
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2013 00:45
|
|
|
Sitting Here posted:^^^ That was a really cool story and one of the few short stories I've felt moved by. I'd never read it before so thanks for linking bro. I enjoyed the "cutesy" words. I think it made it more hosed up. It made me feel like she had a really immature and early introduction to sex. I'll have a full critique later when I have a bit more time, but right now I'm trying to finish reading all 28k words you assholes wrote this week.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2013 00:58
|
|
|
Yeah, I thought the cutesy language was fine. It's absolutely fitting and believable that a person who is the submissive role wouldn't use explicit language.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2013 01:09
|
|
|
Sitting Here posted:
My issue (and this is very, very personal and subjective on my part) with using heavily juxtaposed language is that if it's going to be done, it ought to be done very deliberately, and with a specific goal in mind. For instance, using inappropriately mild language, say, during a horrific or disgusting scene, usually serves to distance the reader from the scene itself, making it seem normal or almost casual/naive. Using violent and vulgar language for what should be a mild or inoffensive scene serves to really engage and stimulate the reader, and also exhaust them. (and is way harder to do effectively) If you were going for that former effect, then I feel like it could have been done a little more deliberately and with a bit more of a consistent/cohesive theme. Your first sentence had the phrase 'jerking off' which to me, set a very adult-sounding tone which most of the rest of the piece didn't match up with. If it'd been consistent throughout I probably would have found the less-vulgar language to be more compelling.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2013 01:18
|
|
|
In my defense, I hang out with middle school children all day long, which is an interesting mix of age appropriate silly words and graphic sexual talk that is way beyond anything they know about.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2013 01:26
|
|
|
Chillmatic posted:My issue (and this is very, very personal and subjective on my part) with using heavily juxtaposed language is that if it's going to be done, it ought to be done very deliberately, and with a specific goal in mind. I agree completely, and thank you for scratching the itch that was in the back of my head as I was posting it. I picked kind of an unnecessarily challenging piece, if only because I felt like I was walking the line between a sincere story and grimdark gore porn. Maybe I'm just oversensitive to the subject matter, but about 3/4 of the way through I was kind of anxious to just get the thing done and posted. I had some wordcount to eat up still, and in retrospect I think I would've spent a little more time developing her character so that the weird aversion to dirty talk made more sense. In any case, silly as it sounds, I learned a thing from this.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2013 03:17
|
|
|
Sitting Here posted:I agree completely, and thank you for scratching the itch that was in the back of my head as I was posting it. I picked kind of an unnecessarily challenging piece, if only because I felt like I was walking the line between a sincere story and grimdark gore porn. Maybe I'm just oversensitive to the subject matter, but about 3/4 of the way through I was kind of anxious to just get the thing done and posted. It's a good story and with a little more work it probably could have been a winner.
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2013 03:43
|
|
|
crabrock posted:I enjoyed the "cutesy" words. I think it made it more hosed up. It made me feel like she had a really immature and early introduction to sex. I'll have a full critique later when I have a bit more time, but right now I'm trying to finish reading all 28k words you assholes wrote this week. I agree, I thought the little kid words fit perfectly. There's clearly something horribly wrong with this woman, and it makes sense for her to talk like that. And it really could have been a winner, not that you really need any more Thunderdome wins you selfish harridan. <  >
|
|
#
?
Jun 5, 2013 13:44
|
|
|
I considered going to The Book Barn's recommendation thread but I thought I might get some better answers / advice here. Hope I'm not out of line. The main character of my story is a Lindsay Lohan-type in her late 20s / early 30s. More specifically, she's a fashion model in L.A., she's into coke, "pills" (don't know which ones specifically), and alcohol (though I haven't decided how hooked she is on the drink). She's a regular presence of the LA social scene and has a working knowledge of the New York City social scene. I am a fat guy who occasionally drinks beer, and that's the closest I'm ever likely to get to a character like this. Are there any books or articles I can read that would help me get into this character's mindset and/or routine? As it stands, the drug use figures into the story in a big way, so it's something I'd like to get at least halfway right on the first draft. (I'd also be interested in books that deal with rehabilitation as that will also likely figure into the story.) Any material / advice that can be thrown my way would be very helpful -- including any books that you'd assume was covered in school.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2013 02:04
|
|
|
DivisionPost posted:I considered going to The Book Barn's recommendation thread but I thought I might get some better answers / advice here. Hope I'm not out of line. The pills are placebos. TWIST
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2013 02:14
|
|
|
Drugs: Brett Easton Ellis (Less than zero), Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting). Iain Banks (Espedair Street) William Gibson (Neuromancer). As a quick and crude primer, coke makes you feel like you're a god of, I dunno, Battlefield 3, and you've just stepped onto the conversational battlefield and you're headshotting noobs left right and center, pam pam pam. What you're mainly doing is talking absolute poo poo very fast. Ecstasy fills you up with warmth and love and makes everything splendid, and makes you prone to seeing the good and lovable side of absolutely everyone and wanting to tell them so (also: dancing). Pure E is technically a drug called MDMA, but there are a bazillion variants and related designer drugs. LSD is more of a smelly hippy drug, but a light dose will have E-like effects, a more significant dose will make visual shapes melt, put coloured lines over everything and be thoroughly strange. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Jun 6, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2013 02:56
|
|
|
For countless detailed drug trip descriptions (including combinations, etc.), go to Erowid. For the other stuff, read trashy tabloid sites like TMZ and Perez Hilton.
|
|
#
?
Jun 6, 2013 03:11
|
|
|
Go to Oh No They Didn't and filter by the Lindsay Lohan tag and you'll get a million posts about her going ons. Maybe do an Amanda Bynes search, too. There's also this recent article from The New York Times about what it was like working with Lohan on a movie: Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie
|
|
#
?
Jun 8, 2013 01:51
|
|
|
DivisionPost posted:I considered going to The Book Barn's recommendation thread but I thought I might get some better answers / advice here. Hope I'm not out of line. I recommend Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson, not so much for the drug references as for the otherworldly, irrational, resigned atmosphere. It captures certain mindstates that are connected to long time drug use, but not to any particular drug. The writing is excellent, and it's also pretty short. If you have the patience, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is also a great resource when it comes to understanding drug addiction and its consequences. Large parts of it take place in a home for recovering addicts, so there's a lot of rehabilitation in it. Rachel's holiday by Marian Keyes is about a young addict in denial who is forced to check into a rehabilitation clinic. The protagonist is similar to what you're trying to create, although she isn't famous, just hooked to the same recreational drugs. Check it out. Chuck N. Awe fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jun 10, 2013 |
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2013 10:42
|
|
|
Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas has some pretty great stream of consciousness drug writing, but that's a pretty unique level of both drug use and writing. You should read it anyway because it's great.
|
|
#
?
Jun 9, 2013 13:33
|
|
|
Thanks for the advice, guys! Rachel's Holiday, Jesus' Son, and Less Than Zero are definitely on my list. Poking around those books also introduced me to Jay McInerney: I tossed in Bright Lights, Big City and Story of My Life. Feel free to keep suggesting if you're in the mood!
|
|
#
?
Jun 10, 2013 04:57
|
|
|
Phil Moscowitz posted:Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas has some pretty great stream of consciousness drug writing, but that's a pretty unique level of both drug use and writing. I'll second this. Thanks to that book I'm too afraid to ever use drugs.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2013 19:37
|
|
|
DivisionPost posted:I considered going to The Book Barn's recommendation thread but I thought I might get some better answers / advice here. Hope I'm not out of line. Yeah you're really loving out of line here, buddy. How loving DARE you come in here with this poo poo?? quote:The main character of my story is a Lindsay Lohan-type in her late 20s / early 30s. More specifically, she's a fashion model in L.A., she's into coke, "pills" (don't know which ones specifically), and alcohol (though I haven't decided how hooked she is on the drink). The kind of 'pills' really does make a huge difference. Someone eating dexedrine will look and act very different than someone eating oxy. People turn to certain drugs for certain reasons, and this should reflect their character/situation/etc. If she's a model, then she almost certainly is hooked on the former. Speed helps people stay thin and high-energy (incidentally, they say it's good for writing, too.  ) Withdrawal symptoms are extreme fatigue, hunger, and irritability. Prescription pain meds are usually taken by people who want to escape from something, or to numb themselves, similar to alcohol. Warm, comfy, quiet. Nothing matters. Withdrawal symptoms are: irritability, restlessness, body aches, sweating, insomnia. These kinds of pills are notorious for being VERY difficult to kick. Either one of those two classes of drugs are, like 90% of what people are talking about when they talk about someone using pills. Heroin is pretty much just prescription pain meds x 10, the added risk of puncturing your skin, and even MORE difficult to kick. Sebmojo already covered coke pretty well. I'd add that it is INCREDIBLY obvious to everyone around when anyone's on blow, as the half-life is very, very short and so they disappear a lot into the bathroom or some other empty place to do some more. As for the rest, most people don't get 'hooked' on psychedelic stuff like LSD or acid or shrooms or whatever, almost doubly not when working in the fashion industry, so I'd probably skip over learning about all of that--unless of course you'd like to anyway or for a different project. Some authors I know insist that you have to try any drugs you're going to make your characters take, to really understand what they're going to feel and want and think. That's clearly not great advice as you can gently caress yourself up pretty readily while fooling around with some of those things. But at the bare minimum you really ought to have a very thorough understanding of the psychological and--just as important--the physiological effects of anything you put into the body of your characters.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2013 20:31
|
|
|
A note on cocaine use: klonopin is often used, with great efficacy, to come down from the more nervous effects of a coke high. Your actress may employ it in this way. The only book I've read that really goes into that was Bret Easton Ellis's 'Glamorama', but plenty of RL friends that I once had swore by it too. EDIT: And yeah, the above fellow is correct. Don't follow that line that you have to take drugs to write about their effects. That poo poo is wrong.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2013 20:38
|
|
|
Goat Bouillabaise posted:EDIT: And yeah, the above fellow is correct. Don't follow that line that you have to take drugs to write about their effects. That poo poo is wrong. Maybe it is for people who have no imagination and/or no capacity to learn things second-hand. e: I'm not implying that's true of anyone in this thread
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2013 21:20
|
|
|
Also, don't write about a character getting shot unless you yourself have experienced a bullet wound, otherwise you'll never get it right. Same thing with childbirth: don't even think about writing that poo poo unless you have literally pushed a baby out of your vagina. Same thing with being a wizard and/or serial killer. Realism, folks! What loving terrible advice. 
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2013 22:08
|
|
|
I think you want to have a general idea of what the experience is like, some sense of how the experience reflects your character (the point about choice of drugs made above is spot on) and a telling detail or two for authenticity. For instance, Heroin makes you constipated. Dope smokers who have run out might clean the tar out of their pipe and smoke that. Cocaine is sold in grams/fractions. The only big nono is ignorance - if you've got a detail make sure it's correct for the particular drug culture you're writing about.
|
|
#
?
Jun 12, 2013 22:29
|
|
|
Was in a writing group the other day and they told me that a line in my story sounded like what somebody who never did crime thought a person who did crime would say. They were right. Off to commit crimes to better my writing...
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2013 02:48
|
|
|
crabrock posted:Was in a writing group the other day and they told me that a line in my story sounded like what somebody who never did crime thought a person who did crime would say. They were right. Off to commit crimes to better my writing... you cannot say that and not post the line you just cannot
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2013 03:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 12, 2024 08:34 |
|
|
I edited it out already but it was something like: "just make sure this doesn't trace back to me." Now that I have killed a man I will avoid such embarrassments in the future.
|
|
#
?
Jun 13, 2013 03:23
|
|